Use Cases

Indoor Navigation and Persons Tracking in the Shopping Mall

December 7, 2017 By Gina Wurms retail |Bluetooth Low Energy|, |server based|, |client based| 0

This application involves navigating and tracking people in a shopping mall. Visitors can navigate to specific shops, restaurants or toilets and parents can locate their children through a bracelet if they suddenly disappear.

At a glance

client-based solution (smartphone app):

2D/3D building maps
indoor navigation to all shops and POIs
Car Finder function

server-based solution:

“Kid Finder” function

PROBLEM DEFINITION

Several thousand visitors come to a shopping mall every day. Not only do visitors quickly lose track of what's going on there and quickly miss good and current offers, or find the toilets with their children not quickly enough. In addition, the shops in the multi-storey shopping centres are not even found; and it is particularly problematic for parents whose children can no longer be found or the car cannot be located in the large car park, even after a long search.

SOLUTION

With an app, visitors can navigate through the extensive building in an interactive map. It suggests the ideal route to the selected shop and can also take accessibility into account. Users also find points of interest (POIs) such as toilets, ATMs, car parks and restaurants and are guided directly to them via turn-by-turn navigation. In addition to the location approval, concerned parents can also locate their children on the map if they have disappeared for a short time. The children will then receive a bracelet on their wrist with a BLE Beacon integrated in it. The app allows parents to see where their child is in real time.

The position of the car can also be saved in the interactive map, so that customers can use the car finder to find their way back to the car after shopping.

TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION

infsoft Locator Nodes are installed on the entire area of the center. The small hardware components are connected to the power grid and capture all signals from devices that transmit BLE or WLAN signals. In this case it would be the children's BLE wristbands or the customers' smartphones in the shopping mall. The position data collected by the infsoft Locator Nodes is transferred to the infsoft LocAware platform^® and made available for Indoor Tracking and Location-Based Services. The position of the car can also be saved by the user in a map, so that the customer can find his car as quickly as possible after visiting the shopping center.

infsoft's Indoor Navigation software can be integrated into existing applications, homepages and kiosk systems.